Chip cards are increasingly being used in a wide variety of areas of daily life. Therefore a very great number of such cards are in circulation. Usually, many measures are taken to avoid pecuniary losses, in particular for the respective card owner, once the chip card has been issued, i.e. during normal use. For example, after the loss of a card, at least, unauthorized use of the card by any third party must be prevented.
Owing to the increasing numbers in distribution, however, measures must also be taken on the one hand to protect, in particular, sizeable batches of cards already before they are individually issued to final customers, and on the other hand to monitor or limit the quantity of cards legally issued to final customers or the quantity of cards which can be issued as a maximum, for example for a period of time, or an amount of remuneration currently paid to a licensor or service provider.
For example, cards are sent in sometimes very large quantities by a card manufacturer to a distributor of cards, for example to a financial institution. This transfer is comparable to the transportation of large amounts of money between banks and is consequently subject to corresponding risks. Furthermore, it is often desirable on the part of the distributor of cards to monitor, document and limit exactly the number of cards which can be issued, for example per employee, to final customers in order to rule out as far as possible the risk of misuse. Since handing over a card to a final customer generally makes it possible for the latter to make use of services, considerable pecuniary losses can be caused by chip cards which are brought into circulation impermissibly, sometimes in quite a large quantity.
The document DE 30 41 393 C2 describes a method of producing a predetermined number of authorization cards having a storage medium. By means of a master card and a first activation station, a limited number of authorization cards is activated. The activation of authorization cards is performed only if the number of activatable authorization cards which is stored in the memory of the master card has not yet been exhausted. After each activating operation, the number of activatable authorization cards is decremented in the memory of the master card. In addition, in the authorization cards there may be a supplemental scope of authorization whereby a predetermined number of additional cards can be activated by a second activation station.